Assembly members mingled with the
hotel's hipster regulars beneath iron
chandeliers, a taxidermied ram, and a
vin tage disco ball while a d.j. played
"Heart of Glass." A few Stringer loyalists
seemed bewildered. "Let me just say I've
never hung out in a place like this," Larry
Hirsch, the ex-president of a group called
the Community Free Democrats, said.
Talking about Stringer, he added, "The
place I've seen him most often is the
Goddard Riverside Community Center,
on Columbus between Eighty-eighth
and Eighty-ninth Street."
Other Stringer fans suggested that
their candidate's relative lack of flash
might be appropriate for a post-Bloom-
berg era. "That's what's cool about
him," David Conn, a fashion executive,
said. "He's authentic. He's genuine. He's
believable."
The candidate, meanwhile, was a
few feet away, huddled inside a narrow
office/supply closet with Scarlett Jo-
hansson. Johansson wore a sleeveless
black-and-white satiny dress. 'We've
actually been together for twenty-five
years, believe it or not," she said, in her
husky voice. The Johanssons, native
New Yorkers, are an active political
family, and Scarlett's grandmother, the
tenants' -rights advocate Dorothy Sloan,
worked with Stringer in the eighties in
support of the Mitchell-Lama housing
program. "She's been singing Scott's
praises ever since I was a little girl," Jo-
hansson said, nodding in the direction
of her eighty-eight-year-old grand-
mother. "And so, many years later, my
brother Hunter ended up working for
him. I heard so much about him for so
long, it was like, All right, let me see
what this is all about."
Johansson's twin brother, Hunter,
was in the supply closet, too. He was
carrying a crutch (soccer injury). "My
sister's a global humanitarian," he said.
"I stumped for Obama for a long
time," Scarlett added.
Stringer, a slightly rumpled man
wearing a bright-blue tie and rimless
glasses, added, "They helped elect a
President-now it's time to elect a
f "
mayor.
Mter a while, Johansson and Stringer
went onstage, in the Jane Hotel ball-
room, and the actress introduced the
politician: "It's always inspiring to see
voters get behind the lesser-known,
less trendy candidate." She checked
off some of his initiatives-bike lanes,
affordable housing, and "his Kill the
Drill campaign in opposition to hydrau-
lic fracking!"
"W owww!" Stringer said, when he
took the microphone. "You know, Scar-
lettJohansson is a world-renowned ac-
tor. . . . But. . . what makes her so special
to all of us in this room tonight is her
work around the globe helping the hun-
gry, speaking truth to power." Then he
made a speech attacking Mayor Bloom-
berg's "top-down management style that
thinks five people can run this town" and
concluded, '10in Scarlett and me as we
take it to the streets of the city!"
Afterward, Johansson and Stringer
were backed into a corner by well-wishers.
The rest of the Johansson family looked
on from a velvet banquette.
"They're two of a kind," Dorothy
r(
Scarlett Johansson and Scott Stringer
Sloan said, beaming. She said she had
been proud of her granddaughter "since
she was knee-high" and listed Johansson
and Stringer's shared qualities: "Charac-
ter. Concern about other people."
Another of the actress's brothers,
Adrian, a thirty-four-year-old real-estate
broker, seemed less enthusiastic. "I'll be
honest with you, I'm a Libertarian," he
said. He said that he was "open to Scott,"
but added, "I try to convince my Demo-
cratic family to support Ron Paul for
President. Because Ron Paul's the only
antiwar candidate." His feelings about
Bloomberg were mixed: "I like his per-
sonality. But hè s a billionaire. And therè s
a part of me that doesn't trust him."
-Lizzie Widdicombe
THE SPORTING LIFE
SUPERFANS
\9
./rir-Ø. If'
B ack in February, Major League Base-
ball called Paul DiMeo, a designer
for ABC's "Extreme Makeover: Home
Edition," with an idea: 'We want to build
'Mister Rogers' Neighborhood,' with
baseball running through it, for hipsters."
More concretely, they wanted a room
where two guys could watch every base-
ball game in the 2011 season-2,429
games in six months. "They got in touch
with me because I've done so many kids'
rooms," DiMeo said. "I guess they thought
it might translate."
This wowd be the M.L.B. Fan Cave,
and its occupants wowd be Mike O'Hara,
the thirty-seven-year-old lead singer of
the Mighty Regis, an Irish punk band
named for the talk-show host, and Ryan
Wagner, a twenty-six-year-old actor most
recently employed as the Cowardly Lion's
understudy in a touring production of
"The Wizard of Oz." Baseball fans con-
sider themselves the most cultured in
sports, and some saw the Fan Cave in
philosophical terms. "If we had to come
up with Plato's Allegory of the Fan Cave,
whatwowd the allegory be?" one baseball
blogger asked. "Do you think when they
see out of the Fan Cave, they see the peo-
ple in the street are just shadows?" Wag-
ner and O'Hara had more practical con-
cerns. O'Hara said of his fiancée, "I owe
her a nice vacation." Wagner added, "I
had a girlfriend when I came here. Look
at me now." (He's single.)
It was the last day of baseball' s regular
season, and the 7 P.M. slate of games was
just beginning. The pair had already
watched more than six thousand hours of
baseball. Only eleven games remained.
'We're going crazy," Wagner said, plop-
ping down on an L-shaped couch. He
and O'Hara had dressed up for the occa-
sion-jeans and T-shirts had been typi-
cal-and O'Hara wore a collared shirt,
untucked, beneath a black sweater, as ifhe
had just come home from the office. He
settled into the couch and yanked the col-
lar loose. "And then depression set in," he
said, looking at his feet.
Major League Baseball had advertised
THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 17, 2011 27